“The Glass Menagerie” by Tennessee Williams is one of most
famous American plays ever written, and it's also one of the most famous works of
Southern literature ever produced. It’s studied far and wide, produced on
stages all across the land and considered a classic by most theater fans.
For those reasons, I added this play to my “bucket list” several years ago and
finally got around to reading it from start to finish this past weekend.
For those of you unfamiliar with this play, it premiered in
Chicago in 1944 and was based on a 1943 short story by Williams called
“Portrait of a Girl in Glass.” A short time later, it moved to Broadway, where
it opened in the Playhouse Theatre on March 31, 1945. Later, it moved to
another Broadway theater, the Royale Theatre, where it opened on July 1, 1946.
The three main characters of the play are a young man named Tom Wingfield; his
mother, Amanda; and his sister, Laura. Their father ran off years ago and they
all live in a run-down apartment with Tom’s life-sucking warehouse job as their
only means of support. Laura’s a strange (and ageing) woman with no marriage
prospects to speak of, and Amanda hounds Tom to set her up with one of her
friends. Near the end of the play, Tom brings home an old high school buddy,
and the results are both sad and life altering for the Wingfields.
I didn’t actually own a copy of this play until last
Thursday morning when I ran across a copy of it in a cardboard box beneath the
used book table near the entrance to the Evergreen-Conecuh County Library in
Evergreen, Ala. The librarian informed me that the books in the boxes beneath
the table were free, so I walked out a few minutes later with a used copy of
the New Directions Books paperback edition of the play. This paperback edition
contains 115 pages.
This book was a relatively quick read. I started it on
Saturday afternoon and finished reading it on Sunday afternoon. In all, I
probably spent about three hours reading it.
Now that I’ve read it, I’d like to see a stage production of
the play or one of the motion picture versions of the play. As far as I can
tell, there have been two major motion picture versions of the play. The first
was released in 1950 and the second hit theaters in 1987. Maybe I’ll add those
to my “bucket list” next year.
I also want to check out some of Tennessee Williams’s other
famous plays. Some of his best known include “A Streetcar Named Desire” (1947)
and “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” (1955). Oddly, I’ve seen the famous motion picture
versions of both of these plays, but I’ve never read the printed play.
In the end, how many of you have read “The Glass Menagerie”
by Tennessee Williams? What did you think about it? Which of Williams’s plays
is your favorite? Let us know in the comments section below.
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